A Year in the World Read Online Free PDF Page A

glance and peachy-cream skin that it takes a moment to notice the half-closed eye stuck on a pin, which she holds in the left-hand corner. This attribute reveals her to be Santa Lucia, whose portraits always have beautiful eyes, just to remind the viewer that she was blinded in her martyrdom.
    I want to do a few dance steps when I come to Ghirlandaio’s
Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni
—what a joy. The beauty of the young woman, seated against an unlit background, shines with such luminosity that her body looks lighted from within. She must have seemed so to Domenico Ghirlandaio because painted just behind her is an epigram from the Roman poet Martial that translates: “If you, oh Art, had been able to paint the character and virtue of the sitter, there would not be a more beautiful painting in the world.” Her squiggly curls and twisted chignon soften her incised profile, and the cloths of her dress must have been the most sumptuous the Renaissance had to offer. What pure pleasure for Ghirlandaio to have rendered those sheens and designs to glorify La Giovanna’s grace. I find equally as compelling Zurbarán’s full portrait of Santa Casilda, a dark Spanish beauty with her hair tied in a thin red ribbon. She’s resplendent in a jewel-bordered crimson dress, which she lifts in front of her in order to walk, giving the impression that she has paused and half-turned to look directly at someone who has spoken to her. I feel lucky to be that viewer, drawn close by her gaze. She, too, was martyred. When she was caught giving bread to Christians, the bread miraculously transformed into flowers. Was it okay to give flowers but not sustenance? I wonder if the stylized white flowers on her skirt symbolize her martyrdom. The portraits in this museum counter, quite wonderfully, all the Prado’s dour faces, their fleshy noses and gray skin.
    The landscapes, the superb collection by northern European painters, the still lifes, the Impressionists—three mornings would hardly satisfy me here. Even the twentieth-century group outshines most American museums’ collections. Now I must add Madrid to my list of places to visit regularly. We buy the museum’s book, even though it weighs about five pounds, because we can’t stand the idea of leaving.
    Late at night, after a strange seven-to-nine-thirty nap, we venture out to dinner, straggling back to the hotel after midnight, when the Spanish are revved. The famous
cocido madrileño
, a complete meal of soup, chickpeas, and plates of boiled meats, certainly warms the winter night. After the three courses, we tumble back into our Heavenly Beds (available for purchase) at the hotel, Ed cosseted by various pills and me by my biography of Federico García Lorca, his poems, and a stack of history and art books.
     
    We have come to Spain to see Andalucía slowly, as intimately as a foreigner can. For me, this is an ancient quest. When I was thirteen and joined an LP (long-playing) record club, I was sent Ravel’s
Bolero
by mistake. As I listened over and over—the first “classical” piece I knew—I imagined myself on an Appaloosa galloping across the Andalucían plains in a flowing cape, hood blown back, my fingers gripping the horse’s mane, feeling the gait in my body, the music’s switches in tempo like changes in wind patterns. The music forever has attached to the memory of sitting at the dressing table amid my older sister’s bottles of perfume and silver brushes and seeing myself as dramatically
other
than the reserved southern child who stared in the mirror. Years later, when my first husband and I lived in graduate student housing at Princeton, a romantic economics student from Nicaragua, Carlos du Bon, used to read Lorca aloud to me under the trees as our small children played with box turtles they’d found in the weeds. Hard to explain such moments. He leaned against a tree in a good Italian suit, tie loosened and his legs crossed. His black, black hair, black as crude